Needed: pay as you go card for UK & France

Are there any forum members living in the uk that could direct me as to a pay as you go card (sim) for voice+data, which I could purchase in the uk to use for data in the uk and france? I will be taking holidays there, and would like to be able to use maps and internet, as well as have the option to make phonecalls if necessary.

Any SIM that works in both places will be expensive in at least one of them. My advice is to get two different SIMs, one for each country. I don't know about France, but I'd recommend O2 for use in the UK. I've found their rates and coverage to be quite good (with the exception of EDGE coverage, of which they have very little.)

Any SIM that works in both places will be expensive in at least one of them. My advice is to get two different SIMs, one for each country. I don't know about France, but I'd recommend O2 for use in the UK. I've found their rates and coverage to be quite good (with the exception of EDGE coverage, of which they have very little.)

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thanks for the advice. For O2 in the uk (forgive me, their site is vastly confusing) is there a decent minimal plan for voice and data that can be purchased easily (maybe 100mins + a few txt + perhaps 500mb data)

I'm just wondering if this is something that can be purchased without having a uk post address or the like. also, is the sim card extra on top of the monthly charge.

yes. I have an iPhone 3G, which yellowsn0w unlocks.
this tariff seems like the one for me, dumb question tho... is scotland considered the uk in this case? or am I now talking 3 sims. haha.

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Scotland counts as the UK.

As for the tarrif, you'd have to make that call based on your usage patterns. Personally, I don't use Simplicity -- instead, I have a Text Anytime prepaid tariff. I top up £10 a month, which gets me 300 free texts. I use £7.50 of that to pay for the web bolt-on, which gives me 200MB of data (officially... the actual cap's closer to 500, but it's hard to use that much without streaming or tethering). The rest I let sit in my account, as I rarely make calls. I've got something like £20 saved up now, which is a nice buffer in case I need to make a lot of calls some month.

If you are unlocked, I'd imagine the O2 sim-only no-contract monthly Simplicity tariff is best, you can get UK minutes, texts and data (eg 150/300/unlimited for £17 per month).

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They certainly wont be able to get that. It is effectively a contract plan (the contract lasting for 30 days). There's no way they'd let someone visiting from a different country sign up to that. They reserve the right to do a credit check which would of course, fail.

For the purposes of Mobile Phones, the UK counts as:

-England
-Wales
-Scotland
-Northern Ireland

Note that this does not include the Republic of Ireland and some of the islands around the mainland.

As for the tarrif, you'd have to make that call based on your usage patterns. Personally, I don't use Simplicity -- instead, I have a Text Anytime prepaid tariff. I top up £10 a month, which gets me 300 free texts. I use £7.50 of that to pay for the web bolt-on, which gives me 200MB of data (officially... the actual cap's closer to 500, but it's hard to use that much without streaming or tethering). The rest I let sit in my account, as I rarely make calls. I've got something like £20 saved up now, which is a nice buffer in case I need to make a lot of calls some month.

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thanks everyone for your help! seems like this will be way less painful than I thought.

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